25 Frames Per Second
by The PalletShipping Ninja
Summary: RespectShipping two-shot. / University isn't easy for Drew. Especially with his slacker roommate to answer to. University AU, Ash/Drew.


This is probably the most self-indulgent, projecting-onto-characters fic I've written in a while. Like Drew, I am also a gay animation student who sometimes struggles with stressful melancholic periods during winter. Like Drew, I also scratch at my skin until I bleed and pull at my hair when I'm stressed out from my deadlines. Like Drew, I am also constantly fighting the urge to tear up my work. It's hard convincing yourself that what you're doing is good enough and the life of an artist can be very destructive, not to mention exhausting.

* * *

 _ **25 Frames Per Second**_

University isn't easy for Drew. Especially with his slacker roommate to answer to.

 _1: Frame By Frame_

 _ **wednesday**_

Drew wakes up to darkness. It's disorienting – he's so used at this point to waking long after the sun has risen, bundled up in blankets that smell like his depression, and faintly like graphite. He often falls asleep sketching, pencils bundled up against him until they leave smudges on his cheeks, and he squints in disdain at the messy thumbnail drawings he created in a zombie-like state hours before.

They aren't perfect. They're disgusting, like he is.

Just as he reaches to tear the page from his sketchbook and start over, he hears a mumble from behind, and warm arms wrap around him. Ash, his room-mate, fell asleep next to him again. He radiates heat while Drew stays cold. He brings cups of coffee and popcorn and anime movies when Drew is sat hunched over at his desk, surrounded by balled up paper that isn't good enough, just isn't good enough. He holds Drew close when it's hard to fall asleep, his mind racing, his scalp raw from scratching for days, thinking about everything he has to do and how every minute he wastes contemplating or sleeping or doing _anything_ but work is wasted time.

He's lucky to have someone who looks out for him, he supposes.

"It's still dark out," Ash mumbles sleepily, as Drew sits up, rubbing his eyes.

"The studios will be open soon," Drew says quietly, picking at Ash's arms until he reluctantly withdraws them. "If I don't get there fast enough all of the computers will be taken."

"You have the worst kind of work ethic." Ash props himself up drowsily on one elbow. Drew looks away. Ash's socks have a pokeball pattern on them. "You should take care of yourself. Deadlines aren't everything."

"Ash, I've been holed up in the room for the past three days drawing storyboards from the sad comfort of my bed," Drew mutters, hand subconsciously reaching up to scratch at an imaginary blemish at the edge of his hairline. The skin feels raw to touch, and the twinge of pain is oddly satisfying. It grounds him. "I need to start animating or I'll never get it done in time."

Ash goes to argue, but Drew tunes him out. He doesn't understand – he can't understand. A guy who spends ten hours of the day playing pokemon and only two in his classes can't possibly understand how overwhelming his workload is. He's jealous. If _only_ it were possible to take a break in this kind of degree.

"Please," Ash says, and it brings Drew back to reality. "Just meet me for lunch. Try and drag your ass away from work just for an hour. It drives me nuts when you overwork like this."

Drew climbs out of bed and stretches. Shower, he thinks, gotta shower.

"Knock if I'm still in after ten minutes," he mumbles, before entering their cramped en suite and turning the knob. He has no time for depression showers this close to deadline week.

…

By 2pm, his hands are starting to ache, and his eyes feel slightly bruised with the strain of staring at the same black and white canvas since eight. He plays through the animatic he started that morning. Character A flips back their hair with a smirk. Character B, holding a rose, snarls back indignantly. Only, right now their heads are potato-shaped and their postures rigid. He hasn't exaggerated them enough. Character A's arm looks dislocated. Character B is clearly looking too much like an ugly caricature of one of his classmates, May. He hopes she won't take interest in his project until after he's reviewed the character's design and run the changes by his lecturer.

"Drew!" Speak of the devil. He quickly minimises the program and turns to see May striding over to him. Her wardrobe ranges anywhere from quirky oranges and green sweater-skirt combos to more athletic biker chic, and right now she's donning a white sports bra with a red button-up thrown on top and dark workout leggings, despite being sat on her ass in front of a computer screen all day.

"May." He fixes his fringe, careful to hide the rawness of the edges of his scalp from her keen eyes. She stops in front of him, arms folded over her chest.

"How's your work going?" she asks. He shrugs.

"Almost ready," he lies. If there's one thing he's determined to do, it's to keep up the appearance that he has everything under control. If his classmates find out he's burning out, it'll only be a matter of time before the lecturers find out too. He can't afford another extension without his grades being impacted.

She frowns. "Seriously? You must like, never sleep. I haven't even started in-betweening the test shot yet." With a sigh, she jerks her thumb towards the door leading out of the computer lab. "Anyway, your roommate is waiting out there for you."

Inwardly, Drew groans and turns back to his monitor. "Tell Ash I'm busy."

"Tell him yourself," May retorts. "Anyway, you look like you're wasting away, so go eat something. There's some guy giving out free cans of soda by the library too, if you're outta money."

"Noted," mutters Drew. He stands, stretching, and packs away. When he leaves the lab, Ash is stood on his phone, familiar baseball cap hiding his eyes, his posture relaxed.

"Hey there, Ketchum."

Ash looks up and his face brightens.

"Hey! Look, I caught a roselia!" He shows Drew his phone, gleefully pointing at his latest Pokemon Go catch, and Drew can't help but crack a smile. Trust Ash to come all the way to the animation building just to show him a new pokemon he caught. Though, roselia is his personal favourite... if he _had_ to choose, of course.

"Nice one."

"Also, you were supposed to text me when you wanted to grab lunch," Ash points out with a slight pout. "Did you eat without me?"

"No. Actually, I was planning on working through lunch, but May forced me to go."

"I like May," Ash grins as he begins to walk, falling into step beside Drew easily. "Remember the bar crawl in Lilycove last Christmas? I've never seen a drunk girl successfully pull off a head stand before."

"That's as athletic as she gets," Drew deadpans. "Don't let her look fool you."

"Come on, don't get jealous. You know she isn't my type, anyway."

Drew frowns and stares down at the ground. "I figured you'd be really into sporty girls. I mean, Misty on the swim team-"

"That again?" Ash groans, folding his arms with a huff. "It was just a photograph taken out of context! She was choking on an olive and I was trying to do that manoeuvrer thing!"

"And Iris-"

"It was a game of spin the bottle in junior year!" he protests. "It was high school, you know? _And_ we'd been doing jello shots."

"Then, showy girls? Like Serena?"

"We were ten and it was a dare!"

Drew puts his hands in his pockets. The days are getting colder, and the campus is covered in a fine mist. Days like these are the ones where he prefers to be staring at his computer screen instead of looking out of the window. Gloomy days like this are the perfect time to get some solid work done.

"Anyway, what about you?" Ash teases, flashing him a grin that makes Drew's stomach flip. "You're always complaining about May, but could it be you actually like her?"

Now it's Drew's turn to huff.

"You come up with the strangest ideas. She's impossible in group projects, always relying on last minute luck."

"Doesn't mean you don't find her cute."

"Who the hell wears sportswear in November when they aren't even in a sports club?"

"Maybe she's trying to show off to you."

"Maybe she's just a weird dresser."

They each grab meal options from the cafeteria and sit down in a quieter corner.

"So how's your work going?" Ash asks through a mouthful of cheese and pickle ciabatta.

"Terrible. My characters have no on screen chemistry together," Drew says sourly, picking at his pasta salad without much enthusiasm. "Character A isn't smug enough, Character B isn't angry enough. Every moment I spend animating makes me want to tear them up and start over."

"It's times like these I seriously wonder why you're studying animation," Ash laughs, shaking his head. "Nothing you ever do seems to be good enough in your eyes. When will you be satisfied?"

"When I have no more time left to change it without jeopardising my deadline," Drew replies darkly, picking grated carrot from his pasta and leaving it in a neat pile in an untouched corner of the packaging. "It's never going to be good enough for me to feel proud of it."

"That's a seriously bad mindset to have," Ash points out, eyes narrowing a little. "Drew, you gotta let these things go. So what if your characters aren't perfect? So what if your frames are messy or inconsistent? If your work has heart, that's what counts."

"You sound just like May," Drew mutters. He reaches up to scratch at yet another intruder on his hairline, a scab that needs to be picked and removed to release just a tiny bit of the stress building inside him.

"Stop that!" Ash says sharply. Drew moves his hand away, and stares down at the smear of blood on his fingertip in a strange combination of glee and disappointment. Knowing he has rid his skin of the imperfection is a euphoric moment, but knowing that a new scab will inevitably replace it replaces that feeling with something sour and hollow.

"I'm done," he announces, before taking a bite of pasta. Ash frowns, and glares down at his sandwich.

"I hate when you do that," he mutters. "You're bleeding, you know."

"It works," Drew says simply, and the subject is dropped.

…

It's dark again when Drew finally leaves the studios, having been kicked out by the cleaning crew at 11. He trudges through campus, hands in his pockets, listening to faux-80s pop that Ash forced him to listen to the last time they held a drinking party at their place. Which, come to think of it, was almost three months ago. He misses the days before his classes started back up again, back when he had free time to actually socialise with friends. Chiefly, Ash's friends, and May.

His fingers are aching from gripping the graphics pen too tightly when drawing for hours on end, and he hopes if he tries to keep them still for the rest of the night they'll still function tomorrow. Any day now he suspects he'll wake up to find they've fallen off in his sleep.

When he enters his and Ash's room, he finds Ash sprawled out on his unmade bed, playing on his DS.

"What time do you call this?" Ash mutters, without breaking eye contact with the screen. By the looks of things, his bayleef is currently getting murdered by a miltank. "Late o'clock?"

"Something like that."

Drew returns ten minutes later with a bowl of instant noodles and hunches on his bed, laying out his sketchbook and pencils on the sheets. He made notes on what needed improving before the head cleaner kicked him out of the lab once and for all, and he's going to figure out why exactly Character A continues to look like a stiff piece of shit on the computer screen.

"So, Whitney?" he guesses, after a few minutes of silence. Ash has been stuck on this battle all week, and he groans and throws his DS dramatically against the wall. One of the corners gains yet another chip.

"Yes! And her fucking miltank! Sadistic thing, crushing my precious pokemon like they're aluminium cans!" He stares up at the ceiling, cheeks puffed out in defeat, before glancing over at Drew. His jaw drops. "I can't believe you're _still_ working."

Drew shrugs.

"I have to. In case you haven't noticed, I'm stuck."

"Just tune out for one night, Drew. Watch some Origins with me."

Drew throws his pencil down on the bed in frustration.

"No! Fuck, Ash, is pokemon all you ever think about?! This is my whole life and my whole future, you know! You don't understand me at all! I have to get this done."

"You're right." Ash frowns and sits up. "I don't understand why you would want a future that forces you into a depressive spiral every time a deadline comes up. I don't understand why you want a future that's stressed you out so much you make your skin bleed every day! I _don't_ get it. Nothing should be more important than your happiness!"

Drew says nothing, glaring down at his bowl of noodles as if they would have an answer for him.

"...I love what I do," he says eventually, choosing not to look at Ash. "Even if it kills me every day I don't care. I love it. I know you can't understand because you're just in it for the degree because your mom told you to. But this is what I _want_ my life to be."

"Sounds like a fucked up life to me," Ash mutters, rolling over and away from Drew.

…

Drew wakes up in the middle of the night with a thumping headache and the need to pee. When he stumbles out of the bathroom, still holding onto his head and cursing himself for not having any painkillers, he sees that in the space of a few minutes Ash has crawled into his bed.

"What are you doing?" Drew asks flatly. Ash holds up his DS in a silent victory.

"I beat Whitney," he explains, and that's all there is to it. At least, it's all that he tells.

Drew rolls his eyes and climbs into bed next to him. He knows this is something most roommates don't do, but there's something comforting about not being alone. Ash has always been openly affectionate with his friends – he's the popular guy on campus, rarely alone, always hanging off of the arm of somebody with that same dorky smile. Drew isn't like that. If May so much as pats his shoulder he'll tense up and try to move away, and he doesn't know what it is that makes him feel this awkward, but when it's Ash, something always gives.

"Gary texted me earlier," Ash says in a low voice, once the lights are turned off and Drew is huddled under the warmth of the covers. His arms snake around Drew's waist, and Drew doesn't tell him to stop; for all the things Ash does that annoys him, he is excellent at spooning, and whether it's platonic or more (Drew has yet to figure that particular one out), it's something he finds himself craving a lot. Especially after they fight.

"Oh yeah? A meme, or something of substance?"

"Both." Ash shows him a crude meme of a bidoof on fire and grins at Drew's lack of emotional response. "Okay, okay. He said two girls in your class invited him to a kegger on Saturday and said you got invited too, so that meant I was invited by default. That right?"

Ah, yes. He thinks about Dawn Lavoie, a perky cute girl always in pink and always with the same white beanie on her head regardless of the season. Of course, by association he then visualises her cool ginger girlfriend, who keeps badgering him to attend the campus LGBT group meetings despite him saying just because he's bisexual doesn't mean he wants to include himself in their little pep squad.

"It's their monthy Pride Kegger," Drew explains with a huff. "I already told them I wasn't interested."

"Why not?" Ash presses, with a mischievous look in his eye. "It'll be fun. We can get you laid, I'll flirt with Gary to piss him off every time a cute girl approaches him, and maybe you can finally talk alone with May. She's gonna be there, you know."

"Stop trying to fix my life, Ketchum," Drew sulks. "I'm not interested in May, I don't want to hang out with a bunch of gay groupies, and I'm way too busy, anyway."

"This isn't about trying to set you up, okay? That's just a nice bonus. But it's been ages since you had fun and it's been ages since we've hung out with our friends! Please, Drew. Please come with."

Ash gives him those big brown eyes that Drew always finds himself powerless against and he looks away.

"Don't, Ash."

"Come on, Drew, please. I worry about you."

In his head, he rushes to do the maths. If he manages to get these damn poses off the ground and complete his animatic... and submit it before the lab gets locked up Saturday evening... he can, in theory, make this party. It'll be a pain in the ass because all he'll probably want to do is sleep, but if he gets it done he can please Ash and maybe, just maybe, have some sort of a social life for the first time in weeks.

"I'll try," he says eventually. "I'm not making a promise. But I'll try."

Ash hugs him a little tighter in the darkness, and Drew hopes he can't feel his heart thumping through his bed shirt, hopes Ash can't feel the excitement in his shorts.

"It'll be fun," Ash promises. "Trust me, it will."

…

 _ **thursday**_

The next day Drew is interrupted again around the same time, this time by two third years, Harley and Solidad. They had roped Drew into working as a draughtsman on their final film at the beginning of the year (using the power of manipulation, bribery through a free meal and taking advantage of his puppy crush on Solidad the previous year) and after four days of searching, they finally corner him in the lab.

"Oh, Drew darling," croons Harley, resting his elbow on Drew's head with a sickeningly patronising smile. "You haven't been avoiding us this week, have you?"

"What?" Drew puts down his tablet pen and takes a sip of water, trying not to let on how nervous he is. "No way. I've just been working, that's all."

"Well, that's good news," Solidad says brightly, sitting down on one of the wheelie chairs next to him. "Can we see? We're doing a routine check on everyone, you know, making sure they're on task."

Before Drew has a chance to protest or create an excuse, Harley grabs his mouse and opens the animation. Drew hates it. The characters are still rigid, the timing isn't fixed, and damn it, he drew half the frames on the wrong layer. Harley wastes no time in bursting into a laughing fit when he sees it.

"The fuck is this?" he snorts, clapping Drew on the back. "This is the worst part yet! Even Brianna's sketches look _human_!"

"Harley," Solidad says sternly, and he clears his throat, wiping at his eyes. She turns to Drew. "He has a point though. It looks like you've hit a block, have you been struggling with this part?"

"No," Drew says quickly, "No, it's just, I think I need more reference. I'll get it right."

She nods and stands up. "You'll have to, it's going towards your final grade. Harley, let's try and recreate the magic for Drew, shall we?"

Harley is all too eager to get into character, flipping back his fringe with a smirk on his face while Solidad, a little more rigidly, feigns anger while clutching an imaginary rose. Drew takes a few pictures on his phone before grabbing his sketchbook and beginning to quickly capture the most important parts of the gesture, their facial expressions...

Character acting is something Drew hates doing. He's never had the confidence to do anything that makes him look stupid, especially where other people might see, and some of his gesture drawings suffer as a result. Harley and Solidad, experts by this time, are masterful with recreating the movements of their characters. They're an excellent double team, and Drew knows for a fact that they're going to make amazing film makers when they graduate next year.

As he's finalising the last details of their poses, May bounds over, hair tied back with a red 1940's style headscarf. Her expression is mischievous as she sits down beside Drew.

"Your roommate is here again."

Drew frowns. "I didn't make any plans with him. Can you just tell him I'm busy?"

"I'm not a messenger pigeon, Drew," May counters. She rests her chin on the back of the chair. "Ash said you're coming to the kegger on Saturday?"

"I said I might," he corrects, tongue sticking out slightly in concentration as he sharpens the lines on the figure drawing. "I'm a busy guy."

"You totally should. A bunch of us are gonna be there, but it's a casual thing. You never come out with us," she continues, and at some point Ash barges into the studios, waving over at her as she continues to try and convince Drew to come. "Your guy's on his way over."

"He's not-" Drew starts.

"Drew, hey! This place is huge! These are all for animation?"

"That's right. Ash, now isn't really a good time," Drew begins, opening up a new file ready to replicate the drawing in digital. "I'm super busy, and me and Harley and Solidad are in the middle of discussing my work."

"Yeah, and your work ain't cutting it," Harley says with a sickly sweet grin. "So fix it, Drew darling, or you'll be wishing you never signed up."

"I'm already regretting this decision," Drew drawls, eyes narrowed, as he continues to ink. Ash, having never been around Harley and his strange personality before, glares up at him.

"Drew busts his ass every day, you don't have to be so hard on him," he says fiercely.

"Ash, don't," Drew warns.

"Yes, Ash~ Don't." Harley's smile sours slightly. "I'm running on four hours of sleep and a lot of coffee, and the last thing I need is Drew's potato men drawings screwing up the production schedule. Capiche?"

"Potato men?" May pipes up, looking confused. "I thought you said you were on top of it?"

"I lied," Drew says through gritted teeth. He reaches up to feel for another old wound, and picks. And picks. And picks.

"Harley, we need to catch up with Kenny now," Solidad interrupts, all encouraging 'come on, let's go' smiles. Harley shrugs and blows a kiss goodbye in their general direction, before sauntering off after Solidad. May groans.

"That guy always gives me a headache."

"Tell me about it," Ash mutters darkly. "I only came to see if Drew wanted to break for lunch, and instead I get threatened by that guy."

"Not sure a menacing smile counts as a threat."

He feels the sickening relief of dampness against his fingertips, and finally speaks up.

"You need to go."

"But I came to get you to-"

"Ash, just piss off, okay?" snaps Drew, turning around. His index finger is covered in blood; May gasps, looking around for where he could have pricked his finger, and Ash stares hard at the telltale redness around Drew's scalp, mouth pulled into a definite frown. "Look, I need to work, and you're distracting."

"You need a break," Ash argues, standing up. "I don't get the deal with you art students, but pushing yourself to stress and exhaustion isn't cool, it _doesn't_ make you a better artist and if you can't even see that I don't see how I can help you!"

Drew doesn't turn around. By the time he finishes the key poses and turns around again, Ash has already stormed out.

…

Ash is eating cold pizza and watching something on his laptop when Drew finally returns home. He has headphones on, but Drew is guessing from the flashing lights and colours that it's something pokemon-related.

"Well, I finished the shot," he says simply, sitting down. He grabbed a sandwich from the late night campus convenience store on the walk home and begins to eat, waiting for a reaction from Ash. He gets nothing.

"I can probably make the party on Saturday," he offers a little more loudly, wondering if that's what it will take for Ash to respond.

"Don't bother."

Whatever he'd been expecting, it certainly isn't that.

"Ash?"

"I said, don't bother,"Ash repeated slowly, taking out his earphones and glaring at Drew. "You obviously don't wanna go. You don't wanna listen to anything I have to say, even when I stick up for you against that asshole third year! All I ever seem to do is convince you to eat every once in a while, beg you to stop ripping your scalp to shreds and tell you to take a damn break every once in a while!"

"I never asked you to do any of those things," Drew snaps, frustration flooding through him. Why does Ash have to do this, why now, when things were going so right for two seconds? "You don't have to!"

Ash shakes his head, laughing a little in disbelief.

"Are you kidding me? Every time I walk into this room I'm scared I'm gonna find you having a breakdown under the covers! Every time I see a smear of blood in the bathroom I fucking pray that one day you'll get it under control! When I see your empty cupboards I hope to myself you've eaten something, anything that day because I know once your heart is set on doing something you won't stop! All I ever do is worry about you and you have the nerve to tell me to piss off!"

"I wish you wouldn't."

Drew's voice is small, and he hates it, but he hates that Ash cares so much more. He wraps up his half-eaten sandwich and kicks off his shoes, climbing into bed still fully clothed. Tonight was supposed to be good – he was even planning to suggest they kick back and play pokemon for a bit – and now it's just the end of any other day, stressful and miserable and _lonely._

Ash tries to finish his episode, but finds that he can't. Snapping at Drew has soured his mood, and he closes his laptop with a huff. His hot anger from earlier has dissolved, replaced by a slow burning frustration. He isn't angry at _Drew_ – he's angry at what his work does to him. Before classes started up, they would have a great time, playing pokemon and watching movie marathons and walking around campus searching for pidgeys. Drew would laugh and smile, and want to go out drinking and they'd have fun.

He knows he can't understand the kind of pressure Drew is constantly under, but that's what he hates the most. He wishes he could understand why it drags out for so long, why Drew stops eating and smiling and sleeping, or why he starts oversleeping, or why he starts picking at his skin and pulling at his hair just to feel some kind of stress relief. He wishes he knew what was going on inside that head of his.

He pulls back Drew's covers slightly, seeing his body hunched up underneath, and he slides into bed next to him. In the dim lighting, he can tell Drew is wearing a pair of his socks, with pikachu patterns around the ankles. Part of him wonders if it's intentional or not.

He begins running his fingers clumsily through Drew's hair, grimacing when he sees scabs and redness that weren't there at the start of the school year.

"What are you doing?" mumbles Drew, without turning around.

"Being the bigger person," Ash says in a quiet voice, moving a little closer. "I'm sorry we yelled at each other."

"You shouldn't apologise," Drew says, and Ash can just hear the scowl in his voice. "You're right to be angry with me. I just... I wish you wouldn't waste your energy worrying about me. I can't see these ways of mine improving any time soon."

"I see you."

Drew stiffens, and Ash wraps his arms around him, pressing his forehead against the space between Drew's shoulder blades.

"I see you working hard. I see you struggling to do what you do every single day and it makes me real proud. When I get on your case, it's because I'm scared one day you'll destroy yourself and I won't be able to stop it."

"You're looking at me with rose-tinted glasses, then," Drew mutters, curling in further on himself. "I make mistakes every day. If I wasn't so damn worried about missing the deadlines, I'd be doing the same shot over and over, just trying to get it right. Sometimes... I wish it could all just disappear. That I could disappear."

Ash tightens his grip on Drew, fearful.

"You wouldn't... right?"

"No. No, I wouldn't, but... that's how it feels sometimes. When there's so much to do and no time and I can't even make sense of what I'm doing, it feels like the easier option."

"It's never the easy option."

"I know."

Ash presses a kiss to the back of Drew's neck, and he shudders.

"Urgh! What was that for?!"

"Uh, what do you think it was for, ass?"

"Did you lick me?" Drew demands to know, rolling over so they're face to face. Ash sticks his tongue out.

"It was a kiss, obviously!"

Drew's face, clearly tear-stained from earlier, blushes a deep red at this realisation.

"K-Kiss?! Ketchum, you-"

"I know, I know, it was a stupid thing to do," Ash groans, feeling a little embarrassed too. "The mood was weird, I didn't know what else to do in a moment like that!"

"How about saying something like, 'just do your best'? That would've cut it, you know."

Ash pouts at him.

"And if I said I wanted to kiss you in that moment?"

Drew frowns back.

"You _can't_ kiss someone in the middle of a deeply emotional vent. Read the atmosphere better next time." He looks away. "Besides, you shouldn't want to kiss me. All we ever do is piss each other off! I really don't understand you."

"That's why you're hard," Ash points out. Drew pushes him out of bed.

"That was my phone in my pocket," he snaps, fumbling heatedly around. Ash spies his phone sticking out of his satchel, but shrugs.

"If you say so."

* * *

Hi so I know this isn't the next chapter of Roses but an animation degree is busy work! So this is something I ended up writing to blow off steam when I was really overwhelmed with my work. I wrote this more for myself because I love projecting onto characters and Drew is very much a perfectionist so it seemed fitting.

This is respectshipping without the drama of Roses, because as great as slow burn drama is sometimes you just gotta have your faves in a semi-peaceful AU. I don't have a degree picked out for Ash in my head, but apparently an 'undecided' degree is a thing in America which is DOPE. So he'd probably do that, but I'm a UK gal so I'm keeping it vague because I have no clue what I'm talking about haha. Anyway, this is a two parter and we'll be getting to the kegger next time! Let me know what you thought? I would love if at least one person reading could relate to this overly specific AU lmao.


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